Phoebe Joins the Art Club
by Inudaughter Returns
Summary: Phoebe joins the art club and begins sketching human anatomy. But when she drops some papers, she gets in trouble with Principal Wartz. Meanwhile, a chicken Arnold is taking care of gets loose and he and Helga search Hillwood for the clucky young thing.
1. Chapter 1

**Someone wondered where the chick from Arnold and Helga's school project went. So I made something up. :)**

"BRRRRRING!" the last school bell of P.S. 118 rang out, releasing a torrent of schoolkids. Kids like Stinky, Sid, and Harold dashed out the door. Yet, Arnold and Helga shuffled out the door slowly. Gerald and Phoebe still stood within the classroom. Helga cast her gaze back into the room.

"You coming, Phoebes?" Helga asked her friend mildly. But it was Gerald who answered her.

"Nah, me and Phoebe here were planning to go get a pizza," Gerald said with a wink towards Phoebe. "Y'all can come too, if you like."

"Bleh," Helga said, her brows lowering. "No, go on ahead so I don't have to endure those dopey stares of yours. But be good to Phoebe, Gerald, or you'll get it!" Helga shook an angry fist threateningly up in the air.

"Oh, I'll mind my manners, Miss Helga G. Pataki!" Gerald said with another wink. "I am a gentleman of my word."

"Hmm," Helga muttered out as Phoebe and Gerald bypassed Arnold and Gerald, with Phoebe giggling all the while. Arnold looked up at her.

"Do you think we should have gone with them?" he asked.

"Us?!" Helga shrugged. "We're the small fish is a big pond here. Phoebe may not look it, but she's a real man-killer, I assure you." Helga blurted out. "Only don't say I told you so. Speaking of survival, I just got through another whole day at the P.S. 118, Hillwood's least funded academic institution! I should get a T-shirt for this! In fact, I think I will!" With that, Helga strode up to a small table-booth set up on the school's blacktop and handed a green bill to Curly. With a wide-smile, Curly stuck the bill in a cash register and printed off a receipt. He then handed the receipt to Brainy, who, still breathing as heavily as ever, handed a neatly folded, bright orange T-shirt with the receipt taped on it to Helga. Helga tore off the receipt, unfolded the T-shirt, and wiggled into it so that her head stuck out of the top. With a mighty yank, it covered up the top of her dress. One book clutched under his arm, Arnold stared at her.

"So...Helga," Arnold voiced delicately, cautious to offend. "Are you doing anything this afternoon? If not then…"

"Huh?!" Helga said tensing. She hid behind her own clutched book. Helga scooted her eyes back and forth along the crowd of students to count them. "No, no, no! I've got tons of things to do! Tons! So I'll have to catch you another time!"

"Oh," Arnold spoke in a softly disappointed voice. "Well, I'll see you later, then." He stalked off.

Arnold returned to his house. The boarding house looked the same as ever, and the pigeon coop on rooftop was the same old coop, except a little too filled with dust and feathers. Arnold pushed the mesh screen up to let in a gust of fresh air. His three pet pigeons scooted out the window with delight and settled themselves down on the edge of the rooftop. With beady eyes, the three gray pigeons spun their heads all around them, then twisted their heads sideways to stare at Arnold as the boy propped open the coop door with a crate.

Arnold was too buy to care about his avian observers. Paused in thought, he rested a finger near his chin to express a loud, "hmm." Arnold swiveled his head around, then bent over to examine a box-crate on the floor.

"Edna?" Arnold coaxed. A little white hen hopped out of the box and walked around. "Oh, good," Arnold smiled. He turned head around at the sound of a sudden scuffle. Then came the sound of breaking, old wooden boards. Then Helga fell through the roof of the old pigeon coop into some hay.

"Ow!" Helga grimaced as she got up slowly from her tumble to check for broken bones. Arnold smiled a sly little smile.

"Oh, great! Helga! Here you can watch Edna while I clean the coop. Here is some grain for her." Arnold handed Helga a pail.

"Who the heck is Edna?!" Helga uttered. She peered down into a pail of loose corn.

"She's the chick from our school project," Arnold narrowed his eyes at her with some real anger. "You know, the one you didn't want to take care of?"

"Ah, like I could take a live bird home with me!" defended Helga. "It would have ended up as fluff-coated lunch meat for my monitor lizard. But more to the point, you named our chick Edna?" Helga flustered, swinging her arms. "What the heck were you thinking?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Arnold. "So go over there and make friends." His frown reversed into a smile.

Helga walked a few steps off. She tipped the bucket so that the white hen could dip its beak into it. Then she set the bucket down for the hen to enjoy. But as she walked away, the hen turned from the food to follow after her, watching her with curiosity. Helga took five more steps away, but the chicken followed her around some more. As much as she tried to move, Helga could not get away from her. Then Arnold popped his head out of the pigeon coop.

"Done," said Arnold. "Although I'll have to get boards to fix the roof."

"Great, now get this stalker chicken away from me," said Helga trying to shoo it away from her foot with the toes of her sneakers. Arnold smiled with suppressed laughter. "Okay. Thanks for watching Edna," the boy said smugly as he carried the chicken back into the pigeon coop to its nest box.

Ah, pizza! Elsewhere in Hillwood, Gerald and Phoebe were just finishing the last two slices of a thick crust pizza with extra cheese. Goo dripped from the slices. Gerald grinned in satisfaction.

"Um, um, um!" he said before wiping his lips with a handful of paper napkins. "Now that's good! Now what do you say? Shall we go over the museum and make it proper, respectable night out?"

"Why, thank you Gerald! That sounds delightful!" said Phoebe, brandishing those long lashes of hers. Phoebe tucked her arm into Gerald's and for once, left of her alluring, "teehee."

At the museum, Phoebe's intellectual side kicked in and she actually drifted apart from Gerald. There were so many things here! An ancient wooden boat. Rocks with trilobites. Scottish bagpipes. Phoebe and Gerald wandered into a hall of impressionist paintings. Then they turned a corner to a come face-to-face with large statues and oil paintings.

"Oh, my!" Phoebe gasped. "That statue over there is….nu..nu… nude!" The girl flustered out. She attracted Sheena's attention. The girl from their class at P.S. 118 had been drawing something in her sketchbook.

"Of course it is!" mumbled Sheena. "It's Greco-Roman. You know, there is a very long and ancient tradition of celebrating the human body in art form."

"Oh," Phoebe flustered. "People really look at art like that? And… you were looking at it?" Phoebe said slightly suspicious of Sheena's moral integrity.

"Of course!" said Sheena. "Understanding human anatomy is the first and most important step to understanding how to draw people well! I was sketching the statue! See?" Phoebe took the sketchbook from Sheena's hands to examine the page.

"Ah, Sheena. This is a picture of a mermaid with a donkey's head."

"And perfectly anatomically correct chest!" Sheena pointed out. "I think all my studying has paid off! Look, these circles might be ears! And on this other picture of mine, those blocks at the bottom are beginning to look like real feet!"

"Uh, yes," Phoebe agreed mildly. "One thing I concur is that you definitely should continue to improve your sketching skills."

"Ahem," Gerald choughed mildly, a little ill at ease. "How about you ladies and I all continue this chat somewhere else?" Gerald was happy to turn his back on the statue and paintings all around them.

The date between Gerald and Phoebe came to an end. The next school day came around. Phoebe was shifting through the contents of her locker when Sheena unexpectedly appeared with her sketchbook.

"Um, Phoebe!" Sheena muttered out, even more mild than Phoebe. "There's a favor I'd like to ask of you! The art club doesn't have anyone who'd like to act as its secretary. So could you join us? We meet only once a week!"

"The at club?" Phoebe mused. "That's an extracurricular activity I never considered! Yet, it would add some diversity and bulk to my school resume."

"So will you come?" asked Sheena. "We're meeting right now!"

"Well….." Phoebe rolled her eyes around. Helga was hiding down the hall, lurking around a corner so that she might stare at Arnold and Gerald without being noticed.

"Alright!" Phoebe uttered out with determination. "I'll do it!"

So it was that mild Sheena with the flower on her shirt, brought Phoebe into a room of mixed repute. Curly was there, making illustrations of something impossible to understand, the paint splashing from his brush all over the floor as he added too many layers. Sheena's work in progress, of course, was a bowl full of flowers. That girl called Mary was there too, as well as Katrinka, working together in a corner. Sheena set up a new easel and canvas for Phoebe to use.

"The subject for next week is people sitting!" declared Sheena. "So if you'd like you can get an early start! I'll model for you by sitting in this chair!" Sheena took a large armchair with puffy blue cushions and sat down on it. "Now try to draw me!"

"Er…" Phoebe mumbled as she picked up a paintbrush. But will Phoebe succeed in becoming a successful painter? And will we see more of that chicken? To be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

Coming home to her room, Phoebe shut the door behind her. In her arms was a brand new sketchbook and a little plastic shopping bag. She emptied the crinkly plastic bag out onto the covers of her bed and began an accounting.

"Let's see," Phoebe said with a critical eye. "A natural gum eraser, a white plastic eraser. A pencil sharpener. Drawing charcoal. And graphite pencils!" Then with an "oof!" Phoebe tossed herself onto her bed to kick up her feet as she took up one of the pencils to examine it. There was a knock on her door.

"Phoebe, dear?" her mother Reba said from around the door. "How are you doing, sweetheart?"

"Just fine, mother!" Phoebe blinked. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason!" said her mother. "Only it's been all day since I've seen my little girl!" Phoebe's red-headed mother tickled Phoebe in the ribs to elicit a small giggle before she gave the small girl a hug. Phoebe smiled up at her lovingly, yet with the shyness of a girl who recognizes that now is the time of separating from one's mother to become more independent oneself.

"Aw, mother!" Phoebe complained mildly. "Stop tickling! It's not fair!"

"Hm," her mother said, slightly disappointed. "If you say so, dear. You are growing up so fast! How was your day at school?"

"I joined a new club today!" Phoebe answered her cheerfully. "And I stopped by the stationery store after school today for some supplies. I found what I needed."

"Do you want to show me what you found?"

"Yes!" Phoebe giggled happily. Then another voice carried in from the door.

"Dinner's ready, my ducklings!"

"Teehee," Phoebe laughed. "Then I'll show you my new things later!" Happily, she and her mother followed her father down stairs for a scrumptious dinner. Phoebe finished her dinner, then paced down the hall to be interrupted by a telephone call. It rang three times so she picked up.

"Hello?" Phoebe asked of her mystery caller. "Rhonda? But why are you calling? What?! No, I'm can't imagine that it's possible! Oh, maybe those two were seeing things! I don't know, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd do!" Cross-eyed, Phoebe hung up the receiver. "Humph!" she snarled at it.

"What's the matter, dear?" her perceptive mother asked. She approached Phoebe to give her a small hug of consolement.

"Oh, it's nothing!" Phoebe flustered. "Well, maybe it's a little! There are these boys from our class and Rhonda says they were swimming without trunks." Phoebe's mother gave a little laugh behind her hand.

"Well, so long as they weren't hurting anyone, it's not much different from a bath! Speaking of which, don't forget to scrub behind your ears, Phoebe! I bought you a new bottle of rosemary shampoo."

"Oh, thank you, mother!" Phoebe uttered. She tiptoed to give her mother a sweet kiss on the cheek, since she was close to her parents.

After dinner, and after her bath, Phoebe went down to the living room with a towel on her head. She paused by one of her parent's bookcases to find an encyclopedia titled, "Art Book" in bold, embossed gold letters. "Hm," Phoebe said before she pulled the enormous hardcover book down. Huffing and swaying under its weight, she managed to lower it down to the floor and plopped it open along its spin to read it.

"Oh, my!" Phoebe gasped, covering her mouth. "There are drawings of naked people again!"

"Well, yes, honey," said her mother from the door. "That book is from my college art class. We had to learn how draw people like that to pass the class. And I never could have learned sculpture without learning to draw people first! So I shrugged off my sense of modesty and dove right it! Maybe you can, too, with your own art project!" Phoebe's mother said, pressing Phoebe's bright-button nose with affection.

"You really think so?" Phoebe asked.

"Um, hum! I'll be washing the dishes if you need anything," Reba said, wandering away.

"Hum," Phoebe said going up to her room. She sat down on the floor with her sketchbook, trying to draw people from her mind. But she crossed all of her drawings out and viciously used her erasers. Then she sat, silent and brooding, with her smudgy but bare page in her hand. Then Phoebe lifted her eyes to see herself reflected in the mirror of her room.

"Hm!" Phoebe declared with joy. "Maybe I can be my own model!" And so she tensed in place, posing like a photograph. After a good long look, she made a few lines on her sketchbook.

* * *

All of the that sketching put Phoebe in a good mood. "Hm, hm, hm!" the raven-haired girl hummed to herself. "With this much practice, I might be the best in all of the art-club! Oh, hello Sheena!" Phoebe hailed the girl. Then she walked on to her locker below Helga's.

"Hello, Helga!" Phoebe chirped brightly. Helga threw a book into her locker and slammed the door shut with one hand so that Phoebe could crouch on the floor and spin the dial to her own locker. "Where have you been?"

"Er… studying," said Phoebe suddenly blushing. "Only I'd rather not say what about!"

"Now you've got me curious," said Helga. "Maybe I see?" Looking mortified, Phoebe showed Helga a page torn from her sketchbook.

"Holy crud!" said Helga slapping a hand to the side of her head. "You need better material! Here," Helga said, reopening her locker to shuffle through its contents. She extracted something from the back. "Try these little 'art books'," Helga said with a wicked grin as she made air quotations.

"Ah! Helga!" Phoebe gulped. "I don't think I want something like these!"

"Hum-hum," Helga said, wandering off to leave Phoebe stewing.

"Oooh!" Phoebe flustered. She clutched her artbook and the not-so-decent pictures in it to her chest. "Well… I really hope nobody finds out!" But the girl really should not have spoken out loud.

"Find out what, might I ask?" Principal Wartz demanded. Phoebe dropped her sketchbook and some glossy magazine prints spilt all over the floor.

"Well, I never!" their school principal said with disapproval. "Such materials are not proper for an primary school institution, young lady! I'm afraid I'm going to have to suspend you!"

"But it's only art!" Phoebe pleaded, almost tearful.

"Not in my school, it isn't! Pfft. Art! Art indeed," the Principal grumbled.

Following the school day, Arnold was up on his roof feeding the pigeons again when he was interrupted by a loud shout from his fire escape.

"Arnold, Arnold!" Helga hollered up at him as she clamored up the rusting-away stair. "Did you hear what happened to Phoebe?! And aw, now she won't talk to me!"

"I heard," Arnold said dismally. "I'm sorry for her. And I can't imagine where she got those pages." Helga craned her eyes around with guilt. "But have you seen Edna? I'm beginning to worry."

"Edna?" Helga asked. "You mean the chicken? Are you sure your grandmother didn't have something to do with it? I saw her running around with a frying pan earlier."

"No, she wouldn't do anything like that!" Arnold said, trying to convince himself more than Helga. "I'm sure she's around here somewhere! Will you help me look for her?"

"Sure, Arnoldo!" Helga answered the anxious boy. And so they both explored all corners of Arnold's fabulous roof. Behind the water tower. Down the covered stairs to the second story. Underneath the piano. Between piled crates. But there was no chicken to be found.

"I'm going to look 'round the neighborhood," Arnold said with growing dread. He grasped hold of the ladder to the fire escape and swung his weight round to descend.

"Wait for me!" Helga called out. She swung down the fire-escape ladder, herself, and as she did so, a stalker chicken popped out from amongst some sacks of bird feed and flew down in pursuit. As Arnold and Helga prowled down the alleyway in search of a chicken, the chicken was in search of… them.

"Bwak, bwak, bwak!" the little white hen bobbed its head as it walked. Arnold and Helga had stopped on the street corner, so it hid behind a trash can.

"Hm," Helga muttered to herself. "If were a chicken, where would I be?"

"The park, maybe?" Arnold guessed. The two kids ran in the direction of the park, and as they moved, the chicken, Edna, began to run swiftly after them.

Arnold looked behind the trunks of trees. Helga looked in the branches of trees. Helga scolded a food vender who promised the chicken drums he was serving weren't from Arnold's pet chicken. The search went on, but they did not succeed in finding the missing bird.

"Hm," Helga said to herself. "We've hiked all the way to the next neighborhood over and still no dice! How about we take a bus back?"

"Sure," Arnold answered. So they hopped on a bus and sat towards the back. Edna, the chicken, invited herself onto the bus, too, and hid under the driver's seat. Arnold and Helga walked right past her as the bus rolled up to a squeaky stop on Vine Street. Eugene was loitering outside of Green's Meats.

"Oh, you're looking for a chicken?" Eugene said, holding a wrapped roast chicken. He pointed a finger north. "I think I might have seen one downtown by the department stores!"

"What are we waiting for!" shouted Helga. So they dashed off to search the shopping malls. But they couldn't see the chicken, Edna. She was running under the clothes hung on the clothes racks, and still following them. So they took the subway home. Edna hid in someone's bowling ball bag three seats down, then hopped off the subway with them.

"Maybe she flew off and came back home!" Helga guessed as they arrived back near Lark Park. So they returned to Arnold's roof and searched the coop again. Sadly, Arnold got up from his knees and his search with a miserable look on his face.

"I'm going to go out and look for her again!" he declared. Silent, Helga followed after the determined boy. She and Arnold walked and searched the streets, its yards, and dumpsters all the way to the industrial district.

"Edna! Edna!" Arnold called becoming desperate to find the lost bird. A man loading a truck heard his shout.

"Edna?" the man repeated after Arnold. "Oh sure, we've of plenty of Edna! Edna's spicy frozen chicken bites! Here, have a free sample, kid!" The sweaty man handed Arnold a box of frozen chicken nuggets. Aghast, Arnold looked down at the box in his hands.

"Uck," Helga uttered with some sympathy. "I swear. From now on, I won't eat stuff like that again! Oh, don't look so shell-shocked, Arnold! It was only a chicken! Let's get you home!"

Helga shoved Arnold along until they returned to their neighborhood and his boarding house. An uncommonly sympathetic Helga was stood on his stoop, waiting for Arnold to enter his bright green door, when all of a sudden a white chicken danced up behind Helga to startle her.

"Eeeie!" Helga shrieked as she tumbled to a hard sit on Arnold's stoop. Edna the chicken hopped up onto her lap. "Stalker chicken!" she complained mildly.

"Aw, I think she likes you!" said Arnold as he plucked the chicken off Helga's lap. "Let's get you put safely in your coop!"

"Whew!" Helga brushed off her hands. "That solves that problem! Now let's just hope Phoebe can work through hers."

Phoebe was having a terrible time getting over her ordeal. She had never, ever expected to be suspended! So she scowled at everyone at the breakfast table.

"Hm!" Phoebe grumbled. It's not fair! That Helga! And that Principal Wartz!"

"Well, I did try to call him to sort things out, dear," Phoebe's mother explained. "We're going to have a conference meeting with him in person at the school, tomorrow, sweetheart. But know that your father and I support your artistic ambition."

One day later, Phoebe walked hand-in-hand between her parents back to school. But it wasn't to attend classes. It was to speak with Principal Wartz.

"But rules are rules!" Principal Wartz told Phoebe's parents. Phoebe waited. All she could do was wait for her parents and the principal to finish their debate.

"We're as much at fault as Phoebe is! We encourage her in her interest, and while I'll ask her not to bring her sketches into school again, won't you please forgive her and let her come back to school?"

"Yes," said Phoebe's Dad. "We want the best for our daughter!"

"Hm," Principal Wartz thought long and hard on it. "Well, okay, but there had better not be any of these kinds of shenanigans from you from now on, do you hear me? And maybe I'd better close down the art club," the man mumbled as an afterthought. Phoebe gasped deeply.

"Uhhh! You can't do that Principal Wartz! Look, how about we show you what kind of beautiful painting and drawings we can make! With clothes!"

"Even shoes?" Principal Wartz bartered. "I don't want to see any more than even a lost sandal, young lady, do you hear? And then maybe I'll be convinced to keep the art club open.

Phoebe had made onerous bargain. Because of it, she and all the members of the art club toiled for weeks, allowing themselves to get splattered by paint and suffering finger cuts. But many band aids later, they had a dozen works of art. They hung them all along the walls of a classroom. Phoebe waited fearfully as Principal Wartz settled a pair of reading glasses on the end of his nose.

"Oh! Oh! What wonderful, delightful, and appropriate paintings these all are! Well, all right, Miss Heyerdahl, you've convinced me. You may remain a member of the art club in good standing. You all have proved to me that you are talented artists!"

"Yeah!" Phoebe's friends all shouted, some even throwing up confetti.

"We're proud of you Phoebe!" her mother and father, whom had come to visit remarked as they took their turn examining the paintings on display. There were painting of cows and horses by Sheena. There was abstract art by Curly. There were paintings of kittens by Katrinka and Mary. Phoebe had done paints of her classmates. In one frame, Helga lifted her fist rather menacingly and in a preceding painting, Brainy flinched as if about to get his face punched. Ah, art! It's a beautiful thing! The end.


End file.
